Those Who Fight
by mcdorfman
Summary: A new day has dawned on the galaxy. A new cycle of civilisations have claimed dominion over space. And it is almost time for the Reapers to return and renew their harvest once more. But perhaps there is still hope, for two asari have survived their cycle's end. With their help, a new band of heroes may yet rise and take a stand against the dark. Sequel to Those Left Behind.
1. Survivors

_Author's Note: Heeey! Here I am with another helping of hot, silky mcdorfman goodness (if you now have a gross image in your head, then my work is complete!). I did mean to put this up earlier, but I had something of a Eureka moment after reading Batman and Mass Effect comics in one sitting. Don't ask, but it did kind of inspire me to come up with a story called 'Umbra'. Shameless plug, I know, but feel free to take a look (though sadly, the initial ideas had more Batman in them than they do, now...but I do have a few references, here and there!)_

_Anyway, this story is a sequel to 'Those Left Behind', which is based on the Refusal ending of Mass Effect 3. This is a very OC heavy piece of fiction, so if that bothers you... But Liara's still kicking (which you'd know if you've read TLB beforehand :P)!_

_Because I don't much enjoy infodumping (and yet can't help it), I'm going to write down some entries on the Mass Effect Fanfiction Wiki, containing information on certain characters, organisations and cultures. So I hope you stay tuned for them, I'll let you know which ones are ready in later chapters._

_This story will be rated M for the amounts of violence and foul language which shall be contained within. Oh, and the smut. There's gonna be smut, too._

_So I implore you to read, hopefully enjoy, even more hopefully to review, follow, favourite, take to bed (as in read ;)), etc... All the good stuff._

_Everything that's Bioware's is Bioware's, the rest belongs to yours truly! _

* * *

**Those Who Fight.**

_**A Mass Effect fanfiction by mcdorfman.**_

**Chapter One: Survivors.**

**SSV Normandy SR-2, orbiting Planet Elpida. 2197 CE, Eleven years into the Reaper War.**

Jennifer T'Soni was having a little trouble. It is a problem which has plagued her ever since the first time she had learned of it in her ten years of life. Though in a world where giant, sentient machines were destroying everything in their path, and where men, women, and children of every organic species are dying or being converted into monsters by the billions, little Jennifer's troubles would seem petty to anybody but her.

Maybe she could handle being raised on a ship full of soldiers with no one else who was even close to her age, moving from place to place for her mother's archiving mission. Maybe she could handle being scared all the time that the next time her mother left the ship, just might be the last time she ever saw her again. But there was one thing her child mind could not handle at this point in time.

Mathematics.

The little asari child was sitting on the floor of the crew deck, crosslegged with a datapad in hand before the Normandy's memorial wall. Not focusing on the problems her mother had set before her on her little datapad, Jennifer looked at the wall. In the years since their mission to Earth was a failure, the number of names had risen. Even just the week before, the crew of the Normandy had placed a few more names upon this wall of the fallen.

**Sarah Campbell**

**Bethany Westmoreland**

**Steve Cortez**

It was an accident, or so she was told. Manpower through the fleet was dwindling despite new recruits replenishing their numbers. Orders had come through by the aging Admiral Steven Hackett to spread non-essential personnel on ships in need of crewmen. Cortez was ferrying Campbell and Westmoreland to an Alliance dreadnought. And then the dreadnought exploded, killing the three when they were caught in the blast. An accident, they say. She may be ten, but she isn't stupid. She knows what she hears when nobody knows she's around. The word 'indoctrinated' popped up more than once.

Indoctrinated. She's come to hate that word. It was a word which made the good guys turn bad. It made them work for the Reapers. It made them kill their friends because the voices in their heads told them to. Indoctrinated. If she lived to be a thousand years old and never heard that word again, it would still be too soon.

Hey eyes scanned the other names which were added during her lifetime. People she has never met before, but they were cared for a great deal by her mother and friends.

**Kaidan Alenko**

Before she was born, the fleet tried to return to Earth and evacuate what remained of the army they left behind on Earth when their Crucible was too damaged to beat the Reapers. They had only managed to rescue roughly a third of the army down there, but Kaidan was not among them. Instead, he was out there helping civilians board what few ships the fleet could spare for the general population of Earth. He was eventually killed by a man who was indoctrinated. He had shot Kaidan in the back and suicide bombed the transport. Indoctrinated. Just another reason to hate that word.

**Tali'Zorah vas Normandy**

Jennifer was only a baby when Tali died. Tali was one of the lucky ones who made it off of Earth when they evacuated, but that luck was not to last. The very minute she heard about her people's decision to leave the fleet and concentrate on defending their homeworld, Rannoch, she fumed and ranted about how they were all a bunch of 'self-concerned bosh'tets' – to quote her Uncle Garrus. The very first chance she had, she went back to Rannoch and tried to convince the Admiralty Board to rejoin the fleet and take the fight back to the Reapers. Her pleas fell on deaf ears, not that it mattered in the long run, for the Reapers had decided to visit their reclaimed homeworld. In just three days, the Reapers had rendered the entire quarian race practically extinct.

**Kasumi Goto**

Kasumi's fate is a little more of a mystery compared to the rest of the names placed on this wall. Nobody has had contact with her ever since the mission to Earth had failed. There had not been so much as a peep from the greatest thief in the galaxy. It was as if she had disappeared from the face of the universe. Eventually, it was decided to put her name on this wall, to presume her dead along with the others. She had a hand in this war, too, however minor her role was. She was a part of the Normandy crew. It only seemed right.

**Miranda Lawson**

Jennifer was roughly five years old when Miranda Lawson had resurfaced after going missing after Earth. The fleet was fighting the war to a stalemate, they were neither losing, not winning. It certainly made a nice change from losing all of the time. Eventually, Admiral Hackett received a communication from Miranda, containing coordinates. As they debated whether or not they should trust a former Cerberus operative and send the fleet to wherever these coordinates led to, the Normandy volunteered to scout the area. As they reached their destination, they saw something which nobody knew if they should be pleased or disturbed by the sight.

Miranda Lawson had revived Cerberus.

It was unknown how she pulled it off, the majority of the human-supremacist organisation being indoctrinated, but it was the fact that she did which brought up concern from Hackett. It was learned that Miranda's new Cerberus has been undertaking new secret projects that could help with the war effort; new superweapons, new ships, eezo mining, secret sanctuaries dotted throughout the galaxy.

Even the fruit borne from the repugnant research performed on Horizon by her hated father; the technology Cerberus developed in their quest to control the Reapers.

And Miranda offered everything she had to the fleet on a platter.

It seemed that the light at the very dark tunnel was about to arrive, were Miranda not betrayed from within her own group. An indoctrinated agent warned the Reapers of Cerberus' plans, and a massive assault was launched against them. Cerberus' new life was quickly snuffed out, their work, the precious time and effort to bring the fruits of their labour into reality, gone in the blink of an eye.

Miranda went missing after that day, and no one had ever seen her since.

The last name she spied was not a recent one. In fact, this name was placed here before she was born, but it was a name which she and her mother hold very dear.

**Commander Jennifer Shepard**

Her father. Her namesake.

The humans on this ship thought it a little weird that she referred to Commander Shepard as her 'father', rather than her 'other mother'. Why would_ that_ be weird? She wasn't the one who had carried her to term, had given birth to her. Of course Shepard was her daddy. Her mother once told her that her own father – Matriarch Aethyta – had a similar conversation with Shepard about what to call her: Liara's father, or her 'other mother'. Though Liara wisely omitted her father's reply.

Jennifer often asks about her father, from her mother, from Uncle Garrus, Uncle Joker and EDI, even Uncle James, who hadn't really known her that long. They each told her that her father was the bravest woman they had ever met. They told her that no matter what the Reapers or the universe in general threw at her, no matter how crappy she felt when it does get thrown at her, she never gave up. She kept fighting, no matter what.

She wants to grow up to be just like her daddy. She wanted to be brave like her, to fight monsters like her, and to keep fighting, no matter what.

"Hey sweetie," said a voice behind her. Jennifer turned her head to see Comm Specialist Samantha Traynor crouch down to greet her favourite asari on the ship. Jennifer always liked Samantha, she was sweet, kind and she always had time to be a friend to her, even when something bad happened and lots of people died. And it was pretty obvious to the ten year old asari that Samantha liked kids, she often wondered when she'll have some of her own with her girlfriend, Diana. She thought it would be great to have another kid on the Normandy, someone she can play with. If they did have children, Jennifer wondered who would be the daddy…or is it 'other mother'?

"What are you doing?" Traynor asked the child genuinely, smiling at the grimace on Jennifer's tiny face when she answered.

"Math," Jennifer groaned as she turned her attention back to the datapad in her tiny hand.

"_Well_!" exclaimed Samantha, crossing her arms over her legs. "I just happen to _love_ math! Well, it kind of comes in handy when trying to network communication through a galaxy going to hell, but I think math for its own sake is fun, too. Want me to help you?"

"Really?" asked the little girl, handing Samantha the datapad. "Could you solve these problems for me, while I go do something more fun? Please?"

"Brat," Samantha laughed. "No, I won't solve your problems, but I can help you solve them yourself, if you like."

Jennifer was about to answer when Joker's voice chimed on the intercom. "_Everybody bring out the welcome mat! Garrus, James and Liara are back_!"

The crew on deck all replied with a "Yay!" which was either half-hearted or sarcastic…maybe both.

"Want to go see your mum, instead?" Samantha asked the asari girl. In answer, Jennifer broke out in a wide smile as she scrambled toward the elevator and pushed the button for the cargo bay and await her mother's arrival. They had been in this neck of space for almost a week now. Liara's mission to seed the galaxy with the time capsules she made. Black boxes filled with the collective histories and cultures of the races of this cycle, technologies to help the next generation of races find their feet, it contained information gathered on the Reapers – the strengths, their weaknesses – and has blueprints for the Crucible weapon which was meant to end the war.

"Mommy!" Jennifer exclaimed as the shuttle doors opened and her mother exited, following after Major James Vega and then Garrus Vakarian – the commander of the Normandy, as well as Primarch of the Turian Hierarchy. Little Jennifer ran as fast as her little legs could carry her and was swept up in a hug by Liara.

"I missed you so much, Little Wing," said Liara, squeezing her beloved daughter tightly.

* * *

**Planet Iero. 2247 CE. Sixty-One years into the Reaper War.**

Today was a beautiful day. Young Jennifer T'Soni hummed brightly to herself as she was enjoying a peaceful afternoon fishing with her biotics in the lake near the prefab house where they have spent the past fifty years hiding from the Reapers. Or rather, she _calls _it fishing – the lifeforms living in the lake could not be described in any way, shape, or form as fish. They were more like...small, scaly Earth pugs which have adapted to life underwater. But whatever they were, they were delicious, and they were tonight's dinner.

Jennifer loved living here. Her mother constructed as many of her time capsules as dwindling resources would allow, numbering roughly over a thousand, give or take, and had them seeded throughout the galaxy, in remote star systems where the Reapers could not possibly think to look, and in the star systems which were inhabited by the more primitive races, hoping that they would find them when they are ready for them. Before it was too late.

And now with her task complete, Liara had then decided to go through with what she intended to leave the Normandy, to find some place very far away and spend the rest of her life in peace and happiness, raising her daughter. Raising her soldier's daughter.

It was a difficult task, but Liara did find a faraway place. She found Iero. This planet was so remote and so devoid of sentient life that surely the Reapers would not think to come looking for life to harvest. This was a perfect planet for them. Liara did invite the rest of the crew to join her if it meant removing themselves from this terrible war, but nobody accepted the invitation. They chose not to wait out their existence – as one crewman put it – they would all fight, and die fighting those Reaper bastards who have taken everything but their lives, and sought to take those as well

And so, they landed here, left alone with weapons, supplies, and a spare prefab to house them. It was a simple life, but sometimes Jennifer liked simple. Other times Jennifer just felt stir crazy, being stuck here with no way off of this planet. She was sixty years old, a young adult by the standards of shorter-lived races. Before the Reapers came, girls her age would be dancing in bars and joining mercenary groups. Well, girls her age except for her mother, who at Jennifer's age was digging in the dirt for prothean artefacts. To each, their own, the younger T'Soni supposed.

Jennifer felt something brush her leg, and she instinctively brought up her biotics, fully ready to pounce on dinner.

"Ha!" she yelled, biotically lifting the dog-fish-thing out of the water. It paddled and writhed helplessly in the purplish-blue cloud of dark energy holding it aloft. Jennifer grabbed the writhing creature and quickly put it out of its misery. _There we go_! she thought, feeling the satisfaction of a job well done. Now all she needs to do is clean it, prepare it and then cook it. A meal fit for queens!

And then she heard something in the distance. It came from the air, like a strong gust of wind followed by a strange warbling sound. Recognition at the sound settled into Jennifer's mind_. It's a ship_! With dinner caught, Jennifer packed up her stuff and ran back home as fast as her legs could take her, to the only place on this planet anyone with a ship had reason to come.

Home, sweet home.

The minute she arrived at the prefab, Jennifer scanned the sky for any approaching ship. Her eyes could not find anything, so she decided to listen for the sound again, and try to pinpoint the direction it was coming from. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the sound, as if doing so would give her a better angle on where to find the ship.

"What are you doing, Little Wing?" asked Liara, giving her daughter a fright after sneaking up on her.

"Mom!" she protested, grasping her heart in shock. _Goddess, she always does this! Why?! Is it some weird 'mom ritual', or something?_ Jennifer turned to greet her mother, who was clad in a wide brimmed hat and a white asari summer dress which was absolutely caked in dirt. Jennifer concluded that she may have been in her garden, digging out some vegetables to add to their dinner.

"Do you not hear that?" she asked her mother, pointing upwards at the sky. Liara cocked her head to listen at the sound.

"You mean the shuttle that broke atmosphere earlier?" she finally said.

"It's a _ship_," corrected her daughter.

"Daughter, I've known that sound for over ten years. It's an Alliance-model UT-47 Kodiak Drop Shuttle."

"You haven't flown in one of those in fifty years, Mom. How do you even remember what one sounds like?"

And suddenly, as if on cue, a Kodiak shuttle flew over their heads and landed several meters away from the prefab. Liara couldn't help but feel smug for proving her daughter wrong. The former Shadow Broker never thought she'd feel so good seeing one of those old things again, given the rather poor memories she associated with them, but Liara couldn't help but feel a little nostalgic.

And a little paranoid. Nobody has ever visited them in fifty years, Liara forbade it, for fear that the Reapers may find out about what was living on this planet. And if they find out that sentient life were hiding on remote planets, then who knows what would happen if they decide to be more thorough in their harvest. Liara wished she kept her gun at the ready. She cursed herself for being so lax in their home's security. However, she is still a powerful biotic. She reminded herself of that fact as she clenched her fist, ready to pop a singularity if she did not like what came out of that shuttle.

The shuttle door slid open, and the first thing which exited was a long wooden cane, followed by an ancient turian clad in civilian clothing. Both asari let their guard down as they recognised the familiar face paint and scarred face of an old friend.

"Uncle Garrus!" exclaimed Jennifer, who ran to the old turian Primarch and swept him up in a tight hug.

"Careful kiddo, I'm not as young and good looking as I used to be," chuckled the old turian as he received his niece's hug. "Not as young anyway," he added.

Liara watched the display between her daughter and her oldest living friend. It was strange to her that the last she had seen of Primarch Garrus Vakarian, he was so young, so strong. And now…now he is an old man. She wondered what that felt like. To be old. But she was only a hundred-and-seventy years old, and was still in the maiden stage of her life.

It was highly likely that if the Reapers never darkened their door, she and Aethyta would outlive the rest of sentient life a much emptier galaxy. That was a sobering thought. She was happy here on Iero, living in peace with her daughter. She was looking forward to living the other eight centuries here, but after seeing her old friend again after all this time, the friend who kept fighting.

She asked herself: was she selfish? Was _Shepard_ selfish for asking that she find some faraway place and just _live_?

She didn't know, but she was curious to know why Garrus would come back here after being told not to.

The T'Soni's had invited Garrus for dinner, he and his escort, which the old turian was surprised was actually good eating, admitting that he hasn't had a good meal in years. Afterward, Jennifer stepped outside and chatted with the marines who accompanied the Primarch to this planet, while Liara and her old friend got reacquainted.

Most of the happenings-on in the rest of the galaxy was sad news for Liara to hear. Garrus had informed her that James Vega passed years ago, as had poor Joker, and Doctor Chakwas. Almost all of the original Normandy crew has been long dead, with the exception of himself and an elderly Samantha Traynor-Allers, who was still handling all of their communications with the help of her son and granddaughter.

In addition to ruling over the entire Turian Hierarchy, Garrus has been commanding the fleet ever since the Battle of Sanctum, an attack on the Reapers which claimed the life of Admiral Hackett when his CIC was hit. Though, he must admit that under his leadership the fleet has been fighting an increasingly uphill war, losing battle after battle…Garrus is sick of it.

Liara told him not to blame himself, they all knew that the Reapers were not going to be defeated conventionally, but the old turian still couldn't help but feel like his head had been continually kicked in by those Reaper bastards.

Which, incidentally, was why the old turian was here.

"I'm not Shepard, Liara," the old turian told her, sadly. "And I'm getting way too old to fly around, trying to save the galaxy. I think it's time I retire from this damn war. Do what you've been doing these past fifty years and just live out what I got left."

Liara was more than happy to have Garrus stay with them; he was her friend, after all. When all arrangements were made, Garrus told his escort they can return to their ship in the morning, but for now, to get some rest.

It was getting dark now, the night was warm, but a cold breeze still chilled the air. The night sky was crisp and clear, without a cloud in sight. Liara was about to go to bed until she was visited upon by her daughter, who wore a serious look on her face.

"I want to go back with the marines," Jennifer told her mother, who shot her down immediately.

"No," Liara simply said. "I forbid it."

The two asari had then suddenly gotten into a big argument over whether the younger T'Soni should stay or leave the planet. Jennifer needs to get off of this planet. She was going crazy down here. It was too dangerous. The Reapers are still out there. Liara didn't want to lose her only child, the one remaining piece of her soldier she still had in this life. The pair of them kept going back and forth on the issue that it seemed that it would never end, until finally, Jennifer had just burst out with something which stopped Liara in her tracks.

"I wanna be like _Dad_!"

"What?" Of all the things Liara expected of her daughter, an outburst like that was not one of them.

"I want to be like Dad, Mom," replied her daughter with tears in her eyes. "All my life, you and Uncle Garrus and everyone else tell me all of these great things about the great Commander Shepard. You all keep telling me how great a soldier she was, how brave she was, how she never gave up and always did the right thing, no matter what the consequences of her actions were. Well, I want _that_! I want what _she had_!"

Jennifer stood a little straighter and looked her mother in the eye. "I know the Reapers are still here. I know that it's dangerous. I know that we'll probably never see each other again, Mom. But despite that, I still want this. I want to fight. I want to help people, like Dad did with you. I want to meet someone and fall in love, like Dad did with you, even if what I have lasted just as long. I want my life to have _meaning,_ and not rotting down here on this beautiful world until I'm a lonely, thousand years old Matriarch who'll just be left here when I die, with no one left to bury me. I'm sorry, Mom. I love you, but I want to do this."

Liara was quiet for a long time, taking in the passionate words of her child. And then she thought to herself that Jennifer truly was her father's daughter. It was then that Liara had taken her daughter in her arms and cried on her shoulder.

"My beautiful daughter," she whispered. "So much like your father."

Moments passed, until the elder asari finally disengaged from Jennifer and took her hand. "Follow me, Little Wing," she said.

Liara escorted her daughter to one of the storerooms they used to keep some of their things, spare parts, survival clothing and the like. The elder asari moved toward one of the larger boxes in the back of the room and opened it, gesturing her daughter to come and see what contained within.

It was a suit of N7 armour.

"This is…" began Jennifer, bringing up a hand to gently caress the grooves of the chestplate, as if this suit was a delicate artefact that would crumble to dust at the merest touch. Jennifer regarded it with the same kind of awe one would have for a legend of old. But wasn't that exactly what her father was?

Liara nodded with a sad smile. "Your father's armour," she told the younger asari, before adding, "one of her old suits, at least. I never wanted you to be a soldier, Jennifer. And I'd like to think your father would agree with me. But while I'm not thrilled about your decision to leave and go to war, you are almost a grown woman, and I suppose you deserve to make your own way into the galaxy. I won't stop you, however much I want to. So, go and fight. Find someone to fall in love with. Have little blue children of your own. And make your father proud...as you have made me."

Jennifer drew her mother into a tight hug, tears streaming down her face as she whispered a "Thank you" into Liara's ear.

Liara shut her eyes as tightly as she could as she squeezed her daughter, remembering the baby girl this young woman once was. She never wanted Jennifer to be a soldier, to go to war, but never has she been as proud of her as she was at that moment. And to give her Shepard's old armour, it was one of the few mementos she had of her soldier, and most certainly the one she treasured the most. But that suit had a worthy inheritor in Jennifer, and Liara believed that the spirit of Commander Shepard would protect their daughter as much as her armour would.

_She'll be alright, Shepard,_ she thought, whispering a silent prayer in her mind. _You'll make sure of it. I know you will._

She them gave a soft laugh as she remembered something her own mother, Matriarch Benezia, had said to her. As had Shepard. "After all, Little Wing," she told her daughter. "All children rebel against their parents. It's a natural part of growing up."

* * *

**SSV Normandy SR-2. 2257 CE, Seventy-One years into the Reaper War.**

War is hell. After ten years of fighting the Reapers, Jennifer T'Soni could be comfortable with saying that. Ten long years of blood, ten years of death, and ten years of watching innocent people be transformed into monsters because she was powerless to stop them. Jennifer often wondered if this is what her father felt, when she failed to save someone. Most likely, she _is_ her father's daughter, after all.

She was in her bunk on the Normandy, not really doing anything of note. She had learned very early on that there were only two absolutes a soldier can feel during a war: boredom and terror. She was certainly feeling the boredom. The Normandy was all so different from when she remembered it as a child. Gone were the familiar faces of decades past, besides EDI, nobody from the original crew has survived this long into the war.

Everyone on this ship were new faces, most of them were even younger faces than she first expected; some of the human crewmembers could have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old.

Children.

Has this war gotten so desperate that they needed _children_ to fight it, now? But of course, one could ask if there really was such a thing as children these days. In the fading embers of galactic civilisation, you grew up quickly and died young, often with a gun in your hand, and sometimes not because the Reapers had killed you.

War really _is_ hell. Seventy-one years of the worst kind of hell.

But perhaps there was one single bright spot in the everlasting darkness. The Captain of the Normandy, Jacob Taylor the Third had informed young Jennifer of some startling news, news which she never thought to hear in a thousand years. But that did not make it any less welcome.

Her mother was coming aboard.

The fleet received a message a few days ago. The signal was weak, and was almost lost in the background noise of the fleet's constant communications. Were it not for the vigilance of Diana Traynor, the Normandy's comm specialist, the signal might not have been found. It used an old Alliance frequency, one that hadn't been used in decades, and transmitted identification codes just as old, but were recognised as belonging to one Doctor Liara T'Soni, archaeologist and former Shadow Broker.

And she asked to rejoin the fight.

Jennifer has not seen her mother in ten years. She hasn't even spoken to her, and was sure she would never see her again after she left Iero. She wondered what she was like now. Did the years apart change her? How was Uncle Garrus? What changed her mind about living her life on the planet?

"_Turian shuttle now docking in hangar_," EDI's voice rang through the bulkheads of the Normandy. "_Lieutenant T'Soni, would you like to join Captain Taylor in welcoming your mother to the Normandy?_"

_Would I ever?_ She thought as she jumped out of her bunk in the blink of an eye, trying not to let her eagerness to see her mother show, least not out of embarrassment but out of deference to the feelings of her fellow crewmates. _Their _mothers, after all, weren't here.

She briefly wondered if the elevator was being extra slow, today of all days, or if the eagerness was playing with her perception of time. And then she decided that it was the elevator's fault.

"Lieutenant," Captain Taylor nodded as she emerged from behind the elevator doors, taking steady steps toward the turian shuttle before stopping beside him. "It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Ten years," Jennifer admitted with a sigh. "I thought I'd never see her again, Captain. She was so dead set on staying on Iero when I was a kid. I don't know what changed her mind."

"Maybe she wanted to see you?" suggested Captain Taylor, to which the asari shrugged. "I heard a lot of things about her. Read the old reports after the signal came through…it's a little weird, T'Soni, that I might actually _meet_ a legend from back when the war began."

A legend. Jennifer had to smile at that. Of course her mother was a legend. Everyone grew up with stories about the original Normandy crew, about Liara and Garrus and Wrex, and all the others. They were the ones who kept fighting, even when they were at their darkest hours. They were the ones who were so close to winning a future without Reapers, and would have won had their greatest weapon not failed. Most of all, they heard stories about her legendary father, whose armour she wore now.

She felt pride as she looked down at the scratched and pitted surface of the N7 armour, the silvery-black colour and the famous red-and-white stripe which ran down her arm. Jennifer was the first asari to graduate from the Alliance's Interplanetary Combatives Training program. The first and only. As much as the allied fleet needed bodies to fight their enemy, they also needed people to engage in asymmetric warfare, surgical strikes against key enemy positions, or just to do as much damage as a single person could in as little time as possible.

There were no asari commandos with the fleet whom Jennifer could learn her trade from, but to the young asari, it was perhaps more appropriate that she learned from the humans instead. Her father's armour was at first an inheritance, something she wore into battle to honour the woman who was once Commander Shepard. But now, as an official N7 soldier, Jennifer felt as if she has truly earned it.

The shuttle door slid open.

"I must say, Little Wing," said Liara as she popped a slice of tomato into her mouth, chewing softly before continuing, "you look fetching in that armour. It suits you."

Jennifer fought her blush as it emerged, hiding her face by looking down and pretending to be more interested in the salad before her. "Thanks," she mumbled awkwardly, now suddenly some awkward fifty-year old girl again. Silence fell upon them, but that was alright. There was time to get to know each other again, even after ten years apart. There was time enough to talk and reconnect, to know how they have been this past decade, to know what their most recent joys and pains have been.

"Hey, Mom?" Jennifer brought her head back to finally regard her mother, who drew from her glass of water.

"Yes, Little Wing?"

Little Wing. Odd that she missed hearing that from her mother. "What changed your mind?" she asked. "You always told me how much you wanted to live your life in peace."

Liara nodded, and then she gave her daughter a sad little smile. "Garrus died in his sleep, last month," she told her. It came as a shock to Jennifer to hear that. Of course, the last time she saw her Uncle Garrus, he was an old man. But there was still strength in him, she knew that. And now to hear that he has died recently...

"Goddess…" Jennifer whispered, still in shock at the news. Besides her mother, Garrus was the last of her family, the last of her mother's closest friends…the last of her father's closest friends. She couldn't help but think that despite how poor the galaxy was these days, it was all the poorer without Garrus Vakarian in it.

And with his death, Liara was now the last of the original crew of the Normandy.

"When I buried him, I remembered something you said to me before you left," continued Liara. "You told me once that you wanted your life to have meaning. That you didn't want to rot on Iero until you died a lonely Matriarch, whose body would be left unburied." Liara remembered that day quite well; for it was the last time in ten years she had seen her beautiful daughter, her soldier's daughter.

"And before Garrus…left us…he told me not to live in Iero anymore, that I deserved better than solitude." Garrus was right. Liara had deserved far more than just solitude. She deserved to be with her soldier, to raise their daughter with her, to be her bondmate…her wife.

"What I do and don't deserve doesn't matter, Jennifer. But what does is I'd like to be with my daughter again," the elder asari finished, sliding her hand across the table to grasp her daughter's, savouring the feeling of reconnection between mother and child.

"Mom, I…I don't know what to say."

They felt the ship rock violently. _What was that?_ Jennifer asked herself. _Were they under attack?_ _Was it the Reapers_?

"EDI?" inquired Liara.

"_The Normandy is currently under attack by the asari heavy cruiser Nefrane_," replied the Normandy AI. "_Our odds are not good._ _I recommend you abandon ship immediately._"

"To hell with that, we're not leaving you!" exclaimed Jennifer. Suddenly there were explosions happening all around them. Alarms were sounding throughout the ship, and they could hear the voice of the Normandy's captain over the intercom.

"_Abandon ship! Abandon ship!_" called Captain Jacob Taylor, the third, his voice cracking under static. "_The Normandy is under attack! Indoctrinated heavy cruiser is attacking us! I repeat: abandon ship!"_

And now came the terror.

"_Please_," said EDI, her synthetic voice sounded as if she were pleading with her only remaining friends. "_Go. While you still can_."

"EDI's right, Little Wing," said Liara as she pulled her daughter from the table, dragging her to the nearest escape pod. "We have to go!"

Jennifer didn't really remember what happened next. She was rushing to the escape pod with her mother, climbing aboard and strapping in, waiting for the others, someone, _anyone_ to join them, before the ship fell apart. But nobody else came.

Jennifer saw her mother close the pod's hatch. "Mom!" she yelled. "There are people still out there!"

"I'm sorry, Jennifer, but I cannot lose anyone else I care about," whispered Liara as she watched one crewman try to batter down the door before an overhead beam broke apart and fell on top of her, leaving the young human a broken mess. "I'm so sorry," she whispered to the fallen crewman, before strapping herself into the nearest seat. "EDI?" she called out.

"_Preparing pod for launch_," replied the AI. "_Launching in three…two…_"

"Goodbye EDI," she told her, a tear fell from her eye. _Another one…_

"_One…_" and then they were launched into the blackness of space. Through the pod's window, Jennifer she saw the Normandy break apart under the enemy's fire as she floated helplessly toward the mass relay, and then suddenly…blackness.

But before she lost consciousness, Jennifer heard EDI's voice for the last time.

"_Goodbye_…"

"Easy there," said the voice. "You're safe now, soldier. You can rest."

Jennifer slipped in and out of consciousness. Every time she woke up, pain wracked her body, and she would find herself screaming. Her body ached, and when it didn't then it burned. She felt so…broken. But there was something in her waking moments which made her _want_ to stay awake and endure the pain.

And that something was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her hundred and six years of life in this brutal universe.

Her name was Sereena. She was an asari who was roughly her age, but she seemed much older, wiser, and smarter than her years. From her, Jennifer learned that their escape pod had crash-landed on Noveria, though both occupants have survived. She had learned that she is currently in an enclave of asari who have taken refuge in Noveria's old Peak Six research facility, an enclave which has been here for the better part of fifty years, ever since the complete depopulation of Thessia. And she learned that the Normandy was the last ship they had seen in their sky since then.

It seemed, for the foreseeable future, she was stuck here, with these people. But as she watched Sereena nurse her back to health, a foreseeable future on a frozen waste of a planet didn't look so bad.

* * *

**Planet Noveria. 2293 CE. One-hundred and seven years into the Reaper War.**

That future on Noveria suddenly turned into thirty-six years. But the thirty-six years she and her mother have spent here could have been heaven on earth as far as Jennifer was concerned. The younger asari found a purpose in helping to protect the few asari now remaining in this galaxy. She found a new home, while not a private paradise she had with her mother in Iero, she didn't need to worry about terror anymore, from the Reapers, from anything.

Liara found a purpose as well, to help teach the younger asari about their people, whom they had barely, if ever, known outside those within the enclave. She taught them about Thessia, their homeworld, and the grand civilisation they built before the coming of the Reapers. She told them stories about the heroes who fought and died trying to save the galaxy from them. And she told them about the greatest hero of them all.

When she wasn't teaching, she was tinkering, mainly on a certain device Jennifer had not laid eyes on in decades. A time capsule. It was a hobby of hers, Liara explained, something to do with herself when she could not do anything more productive with herself. It was incredible to Jennifer, watching her mother work from boxes of salvaged tech and filling the device with data taken from the facility's computers, as well as what she remembered from her time building the originals. She even filled the capsule with new memories, those taken from the asari who invited them into their home, despite the possibility they could have been a danger to them.

And Jennifer found love, with Sereena, who fell in love with her in turn and despite their youth, have bonded to each other in matrimony in a quiet ceremony. They had even talked once or twice about 'little blue children', an old family inside joke as Liara had explained it, but it was decided that children can wait for at least another century or so. They were still in the Maiden stage of their lives.

They were already married; settling down with little blue children can come later. _Much_ later.

She was happy.

And then one day, little could she have known, Jennifer T'Soni's happiness would come crashing down around her.

She lay in bed with her beloved bondmate, caressing Sereena's naked skin as they basked in the glow of their happiness. They had made love in the hours before, but now they just want to stay here, all day, and every day after.

"I love you," Sereena said, a lazy smile plastered on her face as she stroked her bondmate's thigh with her foot. Jennifer was about to suggest to her bondmate a second round when the alarms sounded. Without a word, both of them had dressed hastily, Sereena in her civilian clothing, and Jennifer in her father's N7 armour. It was something that Jennifer had drilled into the others, as the only real soldier they had. She drilled them as if they were raw recruits, and she, their instructor. And she instructed them well.

They both made their way to Peak Six's control centre, the nervous system of their little enclave, which was filled with the entirety of their group, a mere handful of asari, barely less than a hundred, including herself and her mother. Probably the only ones left in the galaxy, now.

"What's the problem?" Jennifer demanded from one asari, one of the younger girls named Cara.

"They're here!" cried Cara in a panicked state, causing Liara to shake her back into sense.

"Calm down," she told the younger asari. "Who are here?"

"The Reapers! Ten minutes ago, I was outside with Sira, hunting for some nathak, and then…suddenly, I hear this terrible noise in the air. And then I saw the Reaper land beyond the mountains!"

"How many?" Liara demanded.

"One, at least. I-I saw just one."

Liara and her daughter shared a look between them. "One is more than enough to destroy us all," she told the younger asari.

Jennifer agreed. But why would the Reapers come, here? Now? And beyond the mountains, at that. There was nothing out there, nothing but snow and hungry nathak. When Noveria was colonised, it only had one tiny colony: Port Hanshan, and seventeen large research facilities, such as Peak Six. There was nothing else on Noveria…unless…

_Damn it all_, thought Jennifer, _what if there was another settlement out there all this time_? If only they knew, they could have invited the settlers into their enclave, they certainly had the room, and it was more defensible than whatever was out there. But at this moment, the reasons why the Reapers have come to Noveria are irrelevant. They had to look to their own survival, as they have for decades.

They need to go with their Plan B.

_If only Plan B wasn't so damn desperate._

"Alright," Liara began, with authority in her voice. "Everybody to the cryo tubes!"

"You heard her," agreed one of the elder asari, a Matron by the name of Denna. "Let's go everyone!"

Peak Six was a research facility in which the corporation which controlled it were experimenting on cryogenic freezing techniques. The fact that they experimented here on Noveria said much about the legality of such research. But it didn't matter. As desperate as they were, the stasis tubes were their best bet for surviving, now.

"Move, move, move!" Jennifer ordered the other asari to the stasis tubes while her fingers hovered over the various commands in the control centre which would seal the facility and bury it under a million tons of ice. If it meant their survival, she would bring down the whole mountain over their heads.

"_Warning! Peak Six compromised!_" came Mira's voice, even after all this time the VI still worked. "_Warning! Peak Six compromised! Please evacuate immediately! Doors will be sealed in T-minus forty seconds!"_

And as soon as those doors are sealed, they'll be buried alive in their iceboxes. But it didn't matter right now. The Reapers won't find them. They were going to make it through this. They will if the daughter of Commander Shepard had anything to do with it.

But little did she know that she had just set in motion events which will propel her into a new kind of hell…and a new kind of hope.

* * *

_Author's Note: It's a long one, I know, but there was so much I wanted to add to the original chapter, and so little I wanted to take from it, it kind of gotten bigger than I pictured. Anyway, stay tuned for chapter two!_


	2. The Havoc She Wrought

**Chapter Two: The Havoc She Wrought.**

**Harkenbren Station, deep in Wild Space. Year of the Discovery (YD) 3253.**

"Another!" called out the eighteen-year old sianesson woman as she downed her sixth shot in just the one hour. She was drinking some kind of cheap nanlesh crap, she couldn't remember exactly what it was called, but it was getting her drunk and better still: it was cheap. That was two points in its favour, even if it did leave an unpleasant taste in her mouth. _It tastes like ass, but it'll do._

"Drinking to forget?" asked the nanlesh bartender as he slid another shot glass of…whatever it was, the contents of which the young woman tossed down her throat in a single swallow, gagging at the taste before putting the glass back where it was.

"Another," she ordered, ignoring the bartender's stupid question. She peered in his beady, black eyes, and the way his scaly, reptilian skin changed colour from a pale, neutral green to a ruddy shade of red, a sign that she had made him a little miffed. _Good._

"This is the eighth shot you've downed in…what, an hour?" the bartender shook his head as he spoke, the colour of his skin returning to its natural green. "And it's not even noon. I didn't even know you biosynthetics even drank!"

"Well, now you do," replied the woman, downing the next shot, and then she gave a short, mirthless snort when she wiped her mouth dry of liquid. Biosynthetics. The very word was racist to a sianesson. It wasn't their fault their progenitors were grown in some talmaran lab, borne of some ancient, long dead race. It wasn't their fault that they weren't even considered real people by the more 'civilised' races that hold dominion over the galaxy. 'Real' people weren't grown in tanks, after all.

Biosynthetics. An offensive slur. But one she didn't care about, not at this point in time.

"We can drink, eat, piss, shit…everything you 'organics' can," she explained. "We're as flesh and blood as you are, even if we're still machines according to Citadel law," and then came another mirthless laugh. "Why, we can even recreate!"

"'Recreate?'"

"You haven't been around sianessons much, have you? It means we can fuck, dude. We just don't do it to have babies. We _can't_. That's what breeding tanks are for! Another," she ordered.

"Come on, honey," replied the nanlesh. "You're eight deep already, and this shit can knock you on your ass. You wanna tell me what's with the liquid breakfast, or what?"

"I'm gonna go with 'or what'," she answered, slamming her glass down on the counter. "Another," she ordered watching his skin turn back to the ruddy red. "No more questions…'honey'."

The nanlesh had enough, and was about to demand that she leave his establishment when he saw a woman walk in with three vorii bodyguards. The woman was an ondile, the sianesson saw, whose tall, skinny frame reminded her of male talmarans, though she was obviously mammalian as opposed to amphibian, with pale skin the colour of marble. Bright, purplish eyes looked at the sianesson from a delicate, heart-shaped face, watching her sitting there.

The sianesson was watching too, more specifically at the ondile's escort. These vorii, or rather, these Vor'chekarr: mercenaries, pirates and criminals, cast out from both their warrior Vor code and their Imperium for some reason or other, were eying everyone inside the bar with a look in their eyes which told everyone to back off.

The sianesson wasn't afraid of them, nor was she afraid of anything.

Her gaze was locked on their large, muscular frames, much taller than she was, even at her own six-foot-three. Heavy armour protected their already formidable bodies, each bearing trophies taken from their kills. Yahg teeth, talmaran fingers, even sianesson jawbones, all were tied into the long, braided hair which framed their armour-plated foreheads.

Their gazes locked with hers, and she raised a glass to them in turn.

"Miss Neelan," greeted the ondile as she took a seat beside the sianesson. She looked so out of place in this bar, a delicate-looking creature dressed in a sharp business suit seated in a dive such as this. "I am honoured to meet…"

The sianesson ignored her as she slid a cred chit across the bar to the skinny alien. "Thirty-thousand credits, on delivery," she said rudely, causing the ondile to stop speaking, reminding herself not to take offense at the lack of respect on display. But that was a problem of both their species; ondiles were excessively polite and respectful, even the most disreputable of their kind held such qualities at their highest, while most sianessons conducted their trade negotiations with the mind that they were not there to make friends. But that possibly came naturally to an artificial species bred for war.

"You know what I want," the sianesson continued, taking another drink and ordering another.

"Yes," the ondile's smile grew thinner, but still remained. "You require information on a sianesson male named…'Hammer'?"

'Hammer' was the nickname of a sianesson criminal whose gang controlled a sizable portion of Harkenbren Station. It was also rumoured that he did a few unofficial errands for the Sianesson Republic. The kind where 'plausible deniability' became their favourite words.

And she was here to kill him.

"I'm not seeing what I want," replied the sianesson after she noticed the ondile just sitting there, neither speaking nor handing her a datapad or ODS, or anything resembling what she had paid thirty-thousand hard-stolen credits for.

"Forgive me, Miss Neelan," said the ondile, three-fingered hands pressed together as she bowed respectfully. "But something has arisen which should concern you."

And as if on cue, the vor'chekarr readied their weapons and took their aim, as had over half a dozen of the bar's patrons. "Forgive me," the ondile bowed again. "But during my investigation I came across a number of flags containing bounties on a number of sianesson biotics who escaped a secret Shadow Operations training facility and fled the Republic two years ago."

The sianesson's hands clenched into fists, shaking with barely contained rage at the mention of the facility the ondile mentioned. It was a well-hidden place built deep within the Scar, the largest impact crater on their homeworld of Sianess Tor. It was there where the military branch of the Special Intervention Service, an arm known as 'Shadow Operations', turned innocent biotic children into sociopathic killers. A lot of pain and blood filled that dark place, and a great many people died there during the escape two years ago. The sianesson had been to prison, once. It was a holiday inn compared to that place.

"The Sianesson Republic is offering one million credits per head, Miss Neelan," the ondile said, her voice betrayed a slight hint of smugness, despite how polite she sounded. "Imagine my fortune when I discover two of those bounties here, on Harkenbren: a male and a rather rude female!"

"Imagine the _mis_fortune this 'rather rude females' gonna inflict," replied the sianesson, fixing the ondile a look which made the alien waver, as if confronting this woman was the worst idea she ever had. "We spilled a lot of blood getting off of Sianess Tor, and I'd rather destroy this entire station and kill everyone in it than go back there."

"Act brave if you wish," came the reply, "but you have no chance at escape. You are outnumbered, outgunned, you cannot win. Your friend will be joining you soon. Please take solace in that when you come with us."

"You're making a mistake," the sianesson looked around the room, calculating just how badly she was outnumbered and outgunned. She observed and deduced, figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of the people pointing guns at her. She noticed a biotic within their number, a talmaran with one blind eye and a bum leg. He was of little threat to her, as was the vorcha snarling at her. Vorcha were idiots, and more a danger to themselves than they were other people, especially those with her kind of training. The vor'chekarr were the biggest danger to her. They were the true warriors among the group, heavily armed and armoured, and prone to certain berserker tendencies when their blood is up. Just the way they liked it. As she deduced and planned her strategy, another thought popped into her mind.

_They need more men._

"Let's go, princess," growled one of the vor'chekarr, shoving his shotgun into her back.

The sianesson woman suddenly laughed, as if she had heard the funniest thing in the galaxy. "'Princess!'" she exclaimed, wiping an errant tear from her eye. "You know, I've been called every name under the infinite suns. Gods know how many times I've been called 'princess'…or sweetheart…honey…sweetie…kid…beautiful…variations and combinations of the above. I've been called an asshole by practically everyone I meet, and that's including the _one _friend I have! The rest I daren't utter among such…" she looked around the bar, at the patrons now watching her, even the ones without guns trained on her, "…_classy_ characters. I've even been called a 'sugar-sweet baby varren puppy' once…Gods know why, I think that guy was on drugs, or something."

"The fuck are you talking about?" the vor'chekarr was confused.

"My fucking _name_…" she began, her eyes glowed with danger as dark energy swirled around her body like some aura of death, "…is _Taris_!"

"Well then…_Taris_," he replied. "You're gonna be Republic varren meat soon enough!"

"Says the man I'm gonna make my bitch soon enough."

"Get off your ass, biosynth!" growled another of the vor'chekarr who grabbed Taris by the shoulder with his meaty, four-fingered hand. Taris was unimpressed, merely reaching for the nearest bottle and helping herself to a glass.

"Take your hand off me," she told him, calmly as she downed another shot.

"You won't like what'll happen if you don't come with us in the next three seconds," he warned, his flanging voice was growling at her.

"Sure I will!" Taris flashed him a wicked smirk. "In three seconds, you'll be my _other_ bitch."

Somebody cocked his shotgun, the nanlesh bartender. But in a split second, Taris threw her hand forward, palm outstretched as she Threw him into the stock of cheap booze he kept on the wall. He fell without taking even a single shot, showered in glass and alcohol. She then threw an elbow back to collide with a vor'chekarr's jaw, her biosynthetic strength enough to cause the larger alien to stagger and let go of her. In another split second, she turned and drove her forearm into his throat, followed by a knee to the chest and then a right hook, followed by a Slam attack which lifted the mercenary into the air before driving him back down to the ground.

She drew a knife and slid it between the plates of his friend's armour, several times before driving it between the plates in his skull in a display worthy of the vor'chekarr. She felt arms grab her, another of the vor'chekarr, so she lifted her legs and planted them against the bar, using her strength and his weight against him as they fell. Another body piled on top of her, trying to restrain her. She felt something hard against her temple, the vor'chekarr's pistol. Taris threw her head backwards, colliding with his chin before she wiggled against the two men and bit down hard into his throat, tasting copper in her mouth as she broke the tough skin.

He clawed at her as she bit down, but she was unrelenting. As he lost blood, Taris felt more men try to restrain her. _Big mistake_, she thought as she pressed her hands against the vor'chekarr's chest, preparing herself for a trick she learned years ago. Biotic energy built up within her, overflowing to the point where she released it into the merc's chest, crushing his armour and the body inside, while the energy propelled her and those on top of her to the ceiling, crushing them while Taris was cushioned against the impact by their bodies.

Chaos filled the bar as those who didn't leave in a panicked hurry quickly readied their guns, even the patrons who weren't even there for the bounty, clearly eager to take out the crazy biosynthetic. _Good! More asses to kick!_ As Taris landed on her feet, she merely grinned and roared a challenge to them as she leapt into the air, biotic energies swirling around her as she slammed her fist to the floor, the resulting Nova forcing back her assailants.

"Bring it!" Taris yelled, clearly enjoying the fight, adrenaline coursed through her veins as she turned her body to evade the shotgun blast aimed directly at her. She grabbed the weapon and twisted her body, relieving the talmaran of his weapon as she spin-kicked him in the head before taking aim with her new gun and shooting a sianesson in the chest.

Pain and a warm wetness coursed down her cheek as she felt the blade slice her face. She gritted her teeth as she grabbed the vorcha responsible by his knife-hand and slammed it against the wall, and then kneecapping him with the shotgun. And then she bashed his ugly head against the wall repeatedly, until the last thing he saw as she caved his head in with a biotic punch was the wound he inflicted quickly knitting itself together.

Taris wiped the blood from her newly healed cheek. Cellular regeneration, a handy trait her race's creators saw fit to add to their genetic makeup. The same with the strength and reflexes their tall, athletic frames did not reveal, but possessed nonetheless. She stopped a moment to survey the havoc she has wrought on this poor little bar, and then she took notice of the groaning vor'chekarr, lying prone on the floor. He was no longer a threat to her, but she knew never to leave an enemy alive. _They_ taught her that.

"I told you you'd be my bitch," she told the merc as she strode towards him, taking one of his large arms and placing a boot against his throat, applying pressure until she crushed his neck and killed him.

And then she brought her attention back to the ondile woman, who wisely ran for it when the tide no longer went her way. _Lucky for her,_ Taris' mind growled. _Skinny bitch. _And then she realised that in all the fun she was having, she failed to obtain the information she needed.

"Gods damn it!" _Okay, no worries…just find the ondile and beat it out of her. Bitch probably took my money, too._

She heard a sound behind her, a piece of glass being crushed underfoot. Without a thought, Taris turned toward the direction of the sound and aimed her gun at the tall, slender frame of Sinder Theron, her closest friend, and the only person she ever trusted. The only person she even _liked_.

They had known each other ever since they first set foot in the facility in which they escaped. By Republic law, any sianesson displaying biotic capability was to submit to the Special Intervention Service, who then inducts them into Shadow Operations, the militant arm of their organisation. As they were being trained to become murderers, they watched each other's backs. The Scar facility was brutal, and the students were advised to adopt a varren-eat-varren mentality, even encouraged to…weed out the weakest of them. But not these two. Since those first few days, they had protected each other from the instructors and the other students. And through each other's help they survived and escaped with the rest who were lucky enough to make it out of there.

And he was now pointing a pistol at her.

"'Sup?" he asked her, before giving her a friendly smirk and lowering his weapon as Taris did the same.

"Oh, the usual," answered Taris as she strode toward him and met his embrace. They had not seen each other in days, while she tried finding out about the security of their quarry, he was elsewhere in the station, looking for someone who would be willing to part with some essential…equipment.

"The 'usual', huh?" Theron smirked as they disengaged. "You make friends everywhere you go."

"What can I say?" Taris shrugged her shoulders. "I'm a people person. We didn't get the info, by the way."

"I noticed," replied Theron, gesturing to the corpses.

"Did you see where she went? We could still get what we need."

"No, she's long gone. We'll need…"

"Harkenbren security!" they heard a voice yell from outside the bar. "We have you surrounded! Come out with your hands up!" _Somebody called the cops!_ They saw the exit blocked by a dozen armed men; among them were techs with omni-tools at the ready, likely loaded with Neural Shock programs. They could hear footsteps above them and was sure that more cops were taking position on vantage points with sniper rifles. Taris and Theron took cover, discussing among themselves what their next step was.

"We can't stay here," he told his friend.

"We can't get out either," replied Taris, who popped her head her head out to see just how bad their situation was, narrowly missing the bullet fired by an overly eager security officer. _Yep, enough men here, this time. That'll do it._ "And we came here to kill a man, didn't we?"

"I know. So what do we do? I say we surrender and figure out an escape plan later."

"That's a shitty plan. I say we fight our way out and take it from there."

"That's a worse plan," Theron pointed out, but it seemed they no longer needed to discuss the matter. The flash bangs being thrown into the bar made the decision for them. "Grenades!" cried Theron, forcing the pair to cover their eyes before they went off.

"Theron, take cover!" Taris ordered as she Threw several of the cops outside. Theron popped a few blind shots outside with his pistol before darting to the nearest decent cover he could find: behind the bar with Taris. They flinched when debris flew from the bar's surface, courtesy of the sharpshooters outside. They could see the faint beams of light scanning the bar for any clear shot that could be made, and they could hear the pounding of footsteps making their way downstairs.

"Well…" began Theron as he grabbed the nearest intact bottle he could see, and then discarded it when he saw it was for the dextro customers. _Wasn't a good brand anyway._ "There go our plans for this evening."

"Yep," replied Taris simply as she took a swig from a bottle and handed it to Theron, who did the same. "When those assholes come downstairs, hit them with a Shockwave," Taris unleashed another Throw attack against those unfortunates who decided to storm the front door, ducking quickly before the hail of bullets took her head off.

"Sounds good," replied her friend as she reached for an errant rag left on the floor. She stuffed it down the neck of the bottle and grabbed another intact bottle, the one Theron discarded. "And you'll be doing what, exactly?"

Taris flared her biotics, concentrating on building a small Warp field around her hand. She brought the field onto one of the bottles and left it there until it caught fire, and did the same with the other one.

"I'm gonna get this party started."

"I thought it _already _started!"

Taris, with flaming makeshift firebombs in hand, leapt from her cover and launched them outside. The resulting bursts of flame would provide a decent way to block off the front door. It screwed their chances of leaving through that exit, of course, but Taris didn't factor that into her plan anyway.

"Harkenbren security!" bellowed one of the cops who burst from the upstairs doors. Theron's biotics whirled around him, building enough dark energy, Theron concentrated and threw his arm out. The energies pulsed from him, travelling forward in short, sharp bursts until they impacted with the first to descent the stairs, bowling into the next man behind him and the others that followed. Taris popped her shotgun out the front door and took a few blind shots, careful not to burn herself with the fire. Sianessons can't regenerate burn damage, after all.

"Let's move, now!" she called out as Theron launched himself from behind the bar and up the stairs, finishing off any cops still conscious. The upstairs floor was something of a maze of rooms and corridors, but thankfully vacant of anyone who could get in their way, either by design or accident. "The roof," Theron suggested, and Taris agreed. If she remembered correctly, there was a service ladder that was built into this place.

They exited and found themselves on the roof, taking in the sight of heavy industrial machinery built into the stations superstructure, back when Harkenbren was one big mining facility. Their eyes searched for the ladder so they could make their escape, but stopped short when they heard a shot ring in their ears. Theron fell to the floor, in tremendous pain, grasping his leg. "Theron!" was all Taris could manage before the other shot got her in the shoulder. She fell alongside her friend, her hand went straight to the bullet wound, desperate to dig the slug out before it did permanent damage.

They were using polonium rounds, she noticed as she felt the burning in her blood. Highly illegal in Council space, but not here. Not that it mattered, even were they in Council space, the law against use of polonium only applied to organic races, not biosynthetics like them. Given enough time, even a non-lethal wound from a polonium round will kill a sianesson. And even if it didn't if it wasn't removed as soon as possible, the wound will not heal.

"Gods damn it!" Taris grit her teeth as her fingers worked to remove the bullet, sucking in a breath and holding it there as she gripped the tiny slug and pulled it out, crawling to Theron to help him dig his out, hoping she'd made it in time enough for the wounds to regenerate.

"Got it," she breathed, and then felt unimaginable pain. Her muscles tensed on their own volition, as if her body was no longer her own. She felt this pain before, having experienced it under the gentle care of ShadOps. Neural Shock. She hated Neural Shocks. It was a worse experience than being electrocuted. It felt as if a million volts of power coursed through her entire central nervous system, the electrical impulses of which only added to the assault as it ran through every cell in her entire body.

She only hoped she didn't foul herself like the last time.

She fell bonelessly over Theron's body, and then she tensed again as the cop administered another Shock. Besides telling her exactly how much this hurt, her brain was telling her something else as she drooled over Theron. And before she lost consciousness, she told the cop so, too.

"You're a fucking dick."

And then there was blackness. But at least she didn't foul herself this time.


	3. Founder

**Chapter Three: Founder.**

**Prison Facility, Harkenbren Station. YD 3253.**

"Well…" began Theron as they walked through the main holding area of Harkenbren Station's onboard prison, ready to begin their first day in the big house. They were only here for as long as the higher-ups on Harkenbren are finding anyone willing to take them off their hands, preferably with large bounties. The Republic would be pleased to hear that they have a couple of ShadOps escapees in their custody, so they didn't have to worry about being spaced when nobody paid. "This is a fine mess you gotten me into."

"That_ I_ got you into?" replied Taris, indignantly as she tugged on her collar. They wore submission collars; a rather repugnant device used in slaving operations and in less than reputable prison systems such as this one. They were designed to constrict around the wearer's throat whenever they got out of line, though theirs had the additional feature of administering drugs that inhibited their powers. They didn't factor the collars until they felt the guards fit them onto their necks, and so all in all, it _was_ a fine mess they had walked into. "Didn't _you _recommend we surrender?"

"Didn't you tear a bar apart and kill…what, a dozen guys?" he pointed out. "And then voted we fight off a dozen men outside, another half dozen above us…and snipers?"

"It was sixteen." Including the idiots who weren't even there for the bounty, who thought messing with an angry biotic was a smart thing to do. "And twelve of them were after my bounty. Thirteen if you include that skinny ondile bitch, but she got away. And we tried fighting our way out, anyway. By the Gods, Theron, we would have made it out of there…maybe."

"Gods preserve me… Taris, you are my best friend," he began, turning to face her, preparing the speech he has given her many times over the years they have known one another.

"Oh, Gods…not the speech," Taris groaned, palming her face as she prepared herself to hear what she has heard for years."

"I love you," he continued, ignoring his friend's reaction. "You are not a bad person. In fact I think you're a terrific person, it is my deepest honour to know you, and to be your friend. But you're an asshole."

"True," she replied, as she had every other time she heard that speech. "Heads up."

Taris noticed a group approach them. There was a yahg, flanked by a talmaran, a raloi, and three vorcha, as well as a parati, all wielding shivs. They thought it odd that a parati would willingly accompany the yahg, their species being enslaved by the hulking monsters decades ago. The vorcha, the raloi, they were slave races too, but it was only the parati who still had the courage to try and fight back.

_Except for this one, apparently_, thought Taris.

"Welcome to hell, little sianessons," growled the yahg, his triangular mouth flashing with razor sharp teeth. While the sianessons were tall enough to dwarf the others, the yahg averaged at a towering ten feet tall. _Everyone _was little to them. "I am your new God," he declared to them, slugging Taris in the face. When she picked herself up, she and Theron shared a look, thinking the same thing. Yahg were pack animals, a race where dominance was everything, and attained through social manoeuvring or brute force. They knew what to do in this prison, if they were going to survive long enough to plan their escape. Show the yahg that they have teeth, too, and they were bigger than his.

"You're not a god," said Theron, eying the three vorcha.

"You're _mine_!" yelled Taris as she headbutted the parati, taking his shiv as the elbowed the talmaran in the face, followed by a knee to his gut. The talmaran fell, and Taris used him as a stepladder to catapult herself to eye level with the yahg. The yahg grabbed her, his monstrous arms crushing her chest in a bearhug. Taris couldn't breathe, and she could feel her ribs cracking and her organs compressing, but this was the only way she could think of to get close enough to do some real damage. _Good thing I'm fearless._

"You like this, you big motherfucker?" growled Taris fearlessly as she drove her shiv into one of the yahg's eight eyes. And then another. And another. The yahg released her, growling in pain as the sianesson blinded him in three eyes, a big, meaty hand covering the bloody ruin of his sockets. This was the opportunity she needed. She slashed the tendons in his legs, causing him to fall to his knees. She climbed on him again, this time over his back. "Who's the God, now? _Huh, bitch_!?" she demanded, stabbing him in the neck with absolute fury. The yahg's arms flailed around, trying to get this biosynthetic off of him, before she killed him.

Theron busied himself with the vorcha, dodging wild attacks from their weapons or their claws, depending on what their small minds decided to use. Even when outnumbered, these little goblins were no match for him, even without his biotics. Theron was more in danger of being knocked out by the stench than he is of these three. But it didn't hurt to let them think they were at least in a fair fight.

_On second thought,_ Theron grabbed a vorcha's wrist as he made a lunge for him, using his momentum against him as he turned and slammed the edge of his hand hard against the back of the collar around the vorcha's neck, killing him. He felt someone stab him, so he turned and wrapped his arm around the vorcha's neck and twisted, pulling the knife out and feeling his flesh heal rapidly. The third vorcha snarled at him.

"Kill you!" he hissed, lunging at the sianesson, latching on as he tried to bite a chunk out of his neck. As he fell, Theron grabbed the vorcha's head and squeezed until the little goblin let go, which allowed Theron to slam his head against a nearby bench repeatedly, savagely, turning the vorcha's head into a bloody mess of gore and overly long teeth.

He picked himself up, back to his feet, dusting himself off while he wondered why the guards didn't do anything to stop the fight, or why their collars didn't stop it for them. _They must have wanted a show,_ he thought, turning his head to see the guards and their prisoners watch the fight from the balconies above. The prisoners were chanting and screaming for blood, slamming against barriers with their fists or whatever they had in their hands.

_Charming people. Well, we needed to dominate if we wanted to live long enough to get out of here. Now we can plan in peace. _Theron turned to see Taris, who was having her fun with the yahg. She always liked taking on the big ones. It didn't matter _how _big they were. He watched her stabbing into the monster like a madwoman, his blood covering her like a gory shower, and for a moment, Sinder Theron could feel the sort of bloodlust she felt. Theron truly believed that Neelan Taris was a wonderful person, even if she was difficult. It was that _they _did to her that made her what she was. What they_ both_ were.

"Do you people see now!?" he bellowed to the other inmates as Taris finished off the yahg, throwing his arms wide apart in a display of grim showmanship. "Do you understand?!_ We_ are not locked up in here with_ you_!"

"You're locked up with_ us_!" finished Taris, revelling in the bloodlust of the other inmates, cackling like a madwoman before the collar constricted against her throat, and the guards dragged them to solitary. 'For protection', they told the sianessons.

"Protection from _you_!" they told them.

* * *

Two days had passed, and they were being escorted out of solitary. It wasn't quite what they planned when they needed to dominate the prison in order to find a way to escape it, but after the incident with the yahg and his gang, the guards kept a very close eye on them. And so they sat there and waited, working out ways to escape their solitude and their incarceration. But the guards were savvy to them. A camera was built in their cell, as were there armed guards and a heavy mech behind their door. They were even told that if they so much as recreated in their cell they would blow them away. Neither sianesson believed that part for a second. They were valuable to the people who ran Harkenbren.

Though that didn't mean they wanted to recreate.

"Back to the jungle, I see?" Theron quipped as they walked, which earned him a hard nudge with a guard's shotgun. What he wouldn't give to be out of these cuffs. He would stick that gun where suns didn't shine.

"Shut up, prisoner," the guard told him. "You're being released."

Taris and Theron shared a look. Released. Which meant that the Republic had found them…which meant ShadOps had found them. They were going back. They were going back.

They would die first.

"Hard to believe somebody beat the Republic's bounties for your sorry asses," commented one guard, which stopped Taris dead before being nudged forward. Somebody else…? Who in their right mind would pay for two sianesson biotics, runaways from a shadowy organisation, and not only that but outbid the Sianesson Republic?

"Five million each!" continued the guard. "I bet the Republic's pissed you're not going to _them_."

"What's that?" she asked, genuinely confused at this turn of events. "Who in the Gods' names bought us?"

"Shut up," he replied.

And so they walked in silence, escorted into a prison personnel carrier and transported to Harkenbren's docking bay, where they were booted out with little fanfare. They grunted when they hit the floor. "I hope you enjoyed your stay at Harkenbren station," said one of the guards, the one who kicked them off the transport. "Now get the fuck out of here!"

He closed the hatch and the transport flew off, back to the prison. Theron and Taris picked themselves up and dusted themselves off, noting that they still wore their cuffs and collars. "Thanks, you fucking asshole!" yelled Taris, before she noticed her friend gesture to the man standing behind them.

"Good to see you again, kid," said the newcomer. He was a large man of middling years, with a square jaw and broad nose, his salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back. But the one thing that Taris noticed first was the artificial right eye he wore, surrounded by heavy scarring. Taris thought the scars were unusual. While missing organs or limbs do not grow back if removed, scars were a thing almost unheard of for her people. There were drugs that inhibit the regeneration of cells, but the more likely scenario was that this man had half his face burned off.

And then she realised what he just said. "Do I know you?" she asked him, looking at him with confusion, and then shifting to Theron who wore the same look.

"I hoped so," he replied. "General Astinin Tarko. I'm a friend of your parents."

Astinin Tarko. The name was familiar to her, though the face was not. Astinin Tarko was, if she remembered, a close friend of her parents Otarral and Serra. Memories flooded her mind at the mention of their names. Memories of a brighter time in her young life, of living in a small house, in the wastes beyond Primarian Sprawl, of learning how to shoot from her strict, yet loving father, of learning how to hide her biotics from her mother, who knew how to hide from the SIS and ShadOps.

And then she remembered the day they took her from them.

"_Get away from him!"_

"_Well, well…you and Serra have been holding out on me, Otarral! And she's a fighter, too! Just like her mother."_

"_Taris, run! Go find your mother!"_

"_Daddy!"_

"_I said RUN!"_

"_Hello again, little girl. You and I are going to have so much fun together!"_

"Hey," said Theron, noticing her discomfort and putting a hand on her shoulder. He knew exactly what was distressing her, having experienced similar trauma. "You're okay."

"Am I?" she replied.

"Yeah," answered General Astinin. "You will be."

They didn't have time enough to react when the older man pulled a gun and fired two tranquiliser darts. Taris' vision became blurry, it was getting darker, harder to see. Her body felt heavier, her strength was leaving her. She fell to one knee, watching the blurred shadow of Theron fighting the tranq a little longer before even he fell to the floor. "Sorry kids," Tarko told them. "But you can't know where you're going. Founder's orders."

She saw the blur of Tarko join her on his knees, taking her in his arms and soothing her anger as he would a child. "Take it easy, kid," he shushed her. "You'll dream of a warm place. And when you wake up you'll be in it."

* * *

**Tayseri Ward, the Citadel. Serpent Nebula, Widow System.**

She was a little girl again, twelve years old and still living in her little house beyond Primarian Sprawl. She could remember it all, as if it were yesterday. She remembered the stench of blood, the feeling of broken debris beneath her bare feet, the hand which grabbed her by the hair, the feeling of helplessness as she looked up at the man grinning down at her. She hated that smile. But most of all, she remembered this as the day her parents died.

"Taris, run! Go find your mother!" Neelan Otarral cried as he tackled the man, causing him to let go of his daughter. They fell to the ground, and Otarral pounded into the man's face. Taris remembered the way the man laughed as he was being beaten, as if he enjoyed it. "RUN!" she heard her father yell, and she obeyed, running out the door, and into the pitch black darkness outside. Taris ran through the void, hearing the wails of anguish which assaulted her ears. She covered her ears, tears fell from her eyes as she ran, screaming for her mother to come save her family. Screams which went unanswered.

She felt hands grasp her shoulders, felt the icy coldness of the man's skin against hers. He felt like a corpse. "Hello again, little girl," he said, giving her a wide smile. She hated that smile. His gaze pierced her very core, and she felt the fear overwhelm her. They were the eyes of a madman. "You and I are going to have so much _fun_ together!"

She remembered the words of Astinin Tarko; that she would dream of a warm place.

He was wrong. Dead wrong.

"NO!"

"No!" Screams woke Taris, and it taken her some time before she realised they were hers. Sweat poured from her skin, and her lungs expanded with air and deflated at an incredibly high rate. Her heart threatened to burst from her rib cage, and it was all she could do not to let that happen, pressing her hands against her chest in some vain attempt to calm herself. _It's just a dream, Taris. It's just a dream. He's not here. He can't hurt you anymore._

Neelan Taris feared nothing. No creature, no man or woman or machine. She feared neither death nor pain, but there was one thing which came close to instilling dread within her core. The monster which haunted her dreams ever since he took her from her parents, the animal whose smile told volumes about his evil. That _thing _that wore the flesh of a man but was neither man, nor creature, nor even a machine. _Him._

"Kolya…" she growled, filling with anger at the very mention of the name.

"_I see you're finally awake_," she heard a voice speak out. Taris jumped out the bed and flared her biotics, prepared to fight her way out of this place…wherever she was. While still alert, she shifted her vision around her surroundings as she padded outside the bedroom with bare feet. She was in someone's apartment, she found, an expensive one judging from the décor and the beautiful view outside, courtesy of some of the biggest windows she had ever seen. And then she noticed her collar and cuffs were gone, as were her clothes, she was clad only in a white shirt and underwear. She was cleaner too, as if someone put her in a shower while she was out. _What the hell is going on?_ she thought, but through her observations she could not find the origin of the voice. It sounded like it came from a man, but…it sounded off, as if the speaker went through the trouble to disguise it.

"_There's no need for violence, Taris,"_ continued the voice. It sounded like it came from a man, but…it sounded off, as if the speaker went through the trouble to disguise it. _"I am no threat to you. And frankly, I'm not even here."_

"Who are you?" Taris demanded from the thin air. "Show yourself!"

"_As you wish,"_ he said, and Taris saw an object float in front of her eyes. It was an orb of some sort, small, metallic, and suspended in a Mass Effect field as it approached her. The orb started to glow, and became a holographic image of handsome, middle-aged sianesson man dressed in a sharp business suit, the kind which even a rich man would struggle to afford. Taris lowered her biotics. It was hard to kill a ghost with a Warp field, after all.

"I'm still not hearing who the hell you are," Taris pointed out. "And it's a pretty dick move kidnapping someone and not having the Gods-damned courtesy to meet them face-to-face."

The man simply smiled at her. "_Forgive me_," he said. "_This is just a precaution. It's extremely annoying, but its better this way, for both of us. There are a lot of people who'd like to see me dead_."

"You're talking to one of them, right now. Where's Theron?"

"_Your friend is safe_," answered the man. "_No harm has come to him, nor will there be. Observe._"

The man changed to a holographic screen projected by the orb. It was security footage, Taris found, of her closest friend walking around in his underwear looking confused. There was no sound, but she could tell that he was calling out to someone. Anyone. He was in an apartment just as expensive-looking and with the same beautiful view. _The same view…he's nearby,_ she deduced. Taris' mind worked overtime, her gaze shifting to the nearest exits and checking the presence of guards. She will get out of here and set about finding her friend. The only other presence she could find was the orb in front of her, but…

"_I know you're planning to escape_," said the man as he materialised back into existence. "_There's no need. You and your friend are free to leave, but first I'd like to speak with you_."

"Fuck that," replied Taris, making her way to find some clothes so she could get the hell out of here and find Theron. "I can leave. Fine. So, I'm out of here."

"_And you'll go where_?" said the man, suddenly, stopping Taris dead in her tracks. "_You're on the run from the Sianesson Republic. There are million credit bounties on you, your friend, and everyone else who escaped from the Scar facility, two years ago. And instead of lying low, you leave havoc behind you everywhere you go on some rebellious crusade against the Republic. Frankly, I'm surprised you lasted _this _long_."

"You don't know me," Taris growled, glaring at the man.

"_On the contrary_," he replied, moving his hands behind his back. "_Hear me out, and then you may do as you please_." With Taris' curt nod, the man began his proposal.

"_My real name is unimportant, right now. Call me 'Founder'. I'm a…patriot…of sorts, and I'd like to make a proposal to you_."

Founder. Taris heard the name before. Whenever she read the news on the extranet, she always read about terrorist attacks done by a group calling themselves 'Valvoryen', after those who die in combat and ascend as warrior-angels sent by the Gods to protect those still living. Sianesson religion was…complicated, to say the least. Even for a race as artificial as theirs.

But the Valvoryen of myth were not the infamous group who claim to guard against threats to the sianesson race, foreign and domestic. They didn't blow up shipyards, or assassinate important people, nor did they pick fights with practically every major power in the galaxy, either.

And she read that they were led by a fanatic, a man so obsessed with defending his people he has practically gone to war with the entire galaxy. A man who called himself 'Founder', no other aliases, no real name, nothing about his past, his family… Founder truly was a ghost.

She looked around the apartment once more before regarding the ghost of Founder. "Nice place," she commented.

"_Thank you_," Founder smiled, "_I'm glad you like it. It's yours after all, even if you refuse my proposal._"

_Mine?_ Never in her entire lifetime could she have dreamed of owning a place like this. She was more used to sleeping wherever she could. She was more used to cheap hotel rooms, crashing at people's houses when they were away, and she even slept on the street on occasion. Whatever money she and Theron had was put to better use in finding ways to hurt the Republic, and if it hurt the SIS or ShadOps, even better. And now, this Founder has just told her this…palace, was hers, no matter what she decided.

"So generous of you," she said, drily. "So tell me, what does the Valvoryen want with me and Theron?"

Founder shifted his body, adopting a more military stance, and then gave her a slight smirk. "_Valvoryen is dedicated to the protection and preservation of the sianesson race. We watch for threats, foreign and domestic, and we do what we can to defend our people against those threats. Even if we have to resort to…excessive force._"

"Like blowing up schools and stuff?"

"_Like stopping slaver operations and hindering the SIS' attempts to control our people_," he replied tersely. "_Everything we do is for the benefit of our people. And while governments condemn us, history shall vindicate us when the time comes and the galaxy needs people like us to save them_."

"Why don't you pretend you're talking to someone educated in psycho school," replied Taris curtly. "In fact,_ don't_ pretend."

"_We're at war_," he said, circling around her in slow, measured steps. "_No one wants to believe it but we are under attack. The _galaxy _is under attack, by an enemy so powerful it destroyed the Predecessors, and will come for us eventually_."

"Bullshit," said Taris, turning to face Founder as he moved behind her. "The Predecessors just disappeared, everybody knows that. The Archives tell us this. There's no evidence of this 'enemy.'"

Which was true. In this day and age, there was very little that remained of the races that came before, the Predecessors, who vanished fifty thousand years ago. Nobody truly knew what happened to them. There was no evidence of war, of some strange disease that ravaged the galaxy; they just…disappeared without a trace, leaving only the Citadel and the Mass Relays as the everlasting monument to their existence. The only information gleaned from their cultures and histories came from heavily corroded data from damaged Archives.

There was certainly no evidence of this powerful enemy Founder had mentioned.

"_And yet it exists," _he said brushing an insubstantial hand down Taris' bare arm._ "I have seen it. I have spent thirty years of my life trying to fight it. You have no idea what I've sacrificed to get even this far._"

"Okay," Taris crossed her arms and looked Founder in the eye. "Assuming I believe this…fantasy of yours. What do you want with me and Theron? What makes us so special?"

"_You and your friend possess skills and abilities very few people do, at least that don't belong to the SIS and Shadow Operations," _Founder answered honestly._ "You're fearless, powerful, a highly trained combatant. And you can achieve levels of destruction I have seldom seen in anyone else. I even read a report on how you killed a yahg with only a prison shiv_," Taris was sure she could hear a hint of pride in his voice. _"What do I want with you? I want you to join us, fight for us. Be my left hand. Be the havoc wrought against those who would try and destroy us."_

"Alright, next question. What's in it for us?"

"_Anything you'd like, money, security…revenge. Even if you refuse, this apartment is still yours to do with as you please. I can afford the cost. You shall also have a generous monthly stipend, a new identity, and you shall never see me again. There is, however, one string attached: in return for this generosity, you must live your life in peace, without picking fights with the Republic, or anyone else for that matter. You must live, find someone, fall in love, have children, grow old, pass on in peace_."

"So I either become this 'havoc' of yours or get set for life?" _Is this guy for real? Why is he so interested in making my life a living heaven? _"Not the greatest way to convince me to join you. Why? I'm nobody to you."

"_You are wrong, Taris. Believe it or not, you are everything to me_," Founder's voice wavered a little. "_Let's just say that if I cannot use your talents, I'll still have a vested interest in your safety. Take your time. I am releasing your friend, now. And I'll be here when you make your decision._"

Taris stood there as the image of Founder walked away. She had a decision to make. Does she choose a life as a terrorist? A woman of her particular skillset and tendencies toward pure destruction is a very attractive addition to any organisation that needed people killed or something destroyed. But she had the idea that if she chose this life, it would then be filled with nothing but hardship. On the other hand, does she choose the easy life? She was very much enamoured with the idea of having a normal life, without having to worry about being caught by the Republic and dragged in chains back to ShadOps...and _him_. She'd like to know what peace felt like.

And then she thought of the Scar facility, of the hundreds of children like her, dragged from their families, taught to kill for the state, made to become monsters. Monsters like _him_.

There was no choice to make at all.

"Wait," she said, causing Founder to remain.

"_Yes_?" he said.

Taris was quite for a moment, before she spoke again. "I can't speak for Theron, but…_ I'll _fight for you," she agreed, fixing her gaze toward Founder. "On one condition."

"_Done_," agreed Founder, quicker than she expected.

"Show me who you really are," she told him, and she could tell that he didn't expect that as the condition. "I know this hologram I'm seeing is a fake, some kind of high tech masking program. Convincing, but not_ that_ convincing. Even if it was…I don't know you, and yet I'm 'everything' to you?"

Taris scoffed, and then crossed her arms, unwilling to entertain any argument from the man. "No, screw your safety precautions. I want to know who I'm dealing with. Show me your real face, or I walk out of here, and screw your stipend."

Founder raised his head, as if he was looking at the ceiling of whatever room, wherever he really was in the galaxy. "_Very well_," he decided after a short while, looking at her with a familiar smile. The masking program was removed, revealing a face which Taris had not seen in years. Not since before she was taken. "_Hello, Taris_," said the true face of Founder. "_It's so wonderful to see you again_."

Even the voice remained the same.

"By the Gods…" an errant tear fell from Taris' ever widening eyes. Her knees felt weak, as if she had been shot with another tranquiliser. She couldn't believe what she was seeing, and yet she knew, deep in her heart of hearts that the image before was no mask, no smoke screen, only the truth, as joyous and as painful as that truth was. She had so many questions, so many things she wanted to say to the face behind the Founder, but there was only one thing above them all that she wanted to say to this person.

"I thought you were dead."


End file.
